Bottle feeding an infant has it drawbacks and difficulties. The bottle must be retained in the correct position for the infant to drink, as well as being held at the correct angle. While the bottle is properly being held, the infant must still be encouraged to drink. The most convenient way used today is for an adult, such as a parent, to hold the baby in one hand and the bottle in the other. This provides comfort for the infant, as well as proper support and positioning of the bottle.
Unfortunately, it is not always possible for a parent to have two hands free for both holding and feeding a baby at the same time. For example, the parent may be walking with the child and need one hand free to carry other items. Further, infants are often placed in carrier seats for transportation, both in the parents arms and in an automobile. The law in many jurisdictions requires infants up to 40 pounds to be harnessed in a child seat whenever the vehicle is in motion. This means infants from newborn to approximately five or six years of age may be required to ride in a car seat, and these infants will often require feeding while positioned therein. Manufacturers and safety officials recommend that the safest position to secure an infant carrier is in the rear seat of the vehicle. That position makes it particularly difficult to attend to the feeding of an infant, especially when the only caregiver is the driver.
This difficulty often required the driver to stop the vehicle to give the child a bottle. When the infant is too young to grasp a feeding bottle, the caregiver must hold the bottle for the infant for the entire time necessary to satisfy the child's need. That delay becomes shorter when the child is old enough to grasp the bottle, in which case the caregiver may only need pause to place it in the hands of the child. Nonetheless, there is a stage when the infant is old enough to grasp the bottle, but not yet dexterous enough to keep hold of the bottle for a suitable feeding time.
Few infants complete drinking from a bottle in one uninterrupted session. More often they drink for several short periods punctuated with interim breaks and so require access to the bottle, on and off, for a prolonged period. A child often loses grip of the drinking container during this prolonged period, especially during the breaks. If in a car, the driver must make frequent stops to pick up a dropped bottle and additionally must contend with spills that result therefrom.
With the extended time that infant's spend in carrier seats, together with the comfort an infant receives while feeding from a bottle, being able to have the infant drink from a bottle while in the carrier seat provides a number of advantages. However, significant difficulties are encountered in attempting to bottle feed an infant while in a carrier seat. The problem is particularly acute when the carrier seat is for vehicular travel. Many carrier seats permit the child and seat to be secured in the automobile for safe travel and then upon arrival at the destination, all or part of the carrier seat may be removed for continued transport of the child in the same seat by a parent carrying the seat by a handle as they walk. However, the carriers are so bulky that it is hard to hold both the seat and a bottle in the correct position when extended feeding is desired.
Infant bottle supports of the prior art do not adequately address the needs for feeding an infant positioned in a carrier seat. In particular, the "Baby Bottle Holder" of U.S. Pat. No. 4,809,938, the "Bottle Holder For Infant Baby Bottles" of U.S. Pat. No. 5,217,192 and the "Infant Feeding Aid Apparatus And Method" of U.S. Pat. No. 4,895,327 do not provide means for attachment of the baby bottle support to ensure that the bottle can be retained in a proper position for use by the infant especially when seated in a carrier seat. In addition, these do provide adequate means for adjusting and positioning an infant feeding bottle or other drinking container for convenient access to the infant.